


To Exist is to Forgive

by StolenVampires



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Green Naruto, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 18:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7325650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StolenVampires/pseuds/StolenVampires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Born to a destiny of blood and secrecy. Created to a legacy of war and conflict. His was a fate chosen for him. He had an existed defined for himself. He would not be one. He would not be the other. He would simply be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Exist is to Forgive

Petrichor. The smell of rain or dew as it soaks the earth. Fresh soil and green life vibrant against a cold morning air that made water gather on every surface that was still. There was the smell of wood smoke burning faintly like an afterthought to the otherwise fresh natural morning. The sound of wind blowing past small shrubs and making leaves crinkle and whisper against that which blocked it's path. It was serene. It was peaceful.

It was not his home. He no longer had a home, only a place that he found tranquil. Free of conflict inner and outer. 

It was a temple in remote mountains, just before the omnic monks rose to do their daily meditations. It was empty of earthen wants and desires. Limited to only what was needed to survive. It housed plants for the human pilgrims to eat. Animals for milk and wool. It had simple tools to craft and spend time when not in meditation or reflection.

It had been years since he'd woken on that slab of cold metal, numb, feeling through a new set of senses. A second skin that wasn't his own. Limbs that had been half made of bone and sinew while the other have of circuitry and metal. The touch he had no longer flesh from an alloy strong enough to resist gunshot. His strength not that of a ninja, or a man, but of machine, able to crush blocks of wood and steel if unchecked. He could see past normal human vision behind a visor, yet his eyes looked human. He could feel and taste yet not experience it as he once had. It gave no comfort. It gave not a true sustenance. It was a half life. A mockery of what was once human and trying to pass as what it should have been. 

He had been young and brash. A child in the eyes of the world brimming with vigor and confidence and affluence. He was a born and bred man for killing. Yet he rose surrounded by indulgence. He grew in a place that was filled with plenty and yet even then he was not whole. He was trained in arts that were unknown and skills secret to blood and generations. He was perfected to fill a destiny. One that he held no desire for past what splendors and succulent rewards it gave. There was substance. No form. There was only indulgence. Only extravagance.

The cold wind rushed past him, and the sound of wings beat against the sky as birds that roosted in the temple's statues took to the open air.

Here there was tranquility. Here, he was left with only himself. Here, he was not the man born to a blood stained destiny of a clan raised to kill. Here, we was not a man, nor, was he machine. Here, he was.

He existed.

And that was enough. That was all that was asked of him. To exist. To be. To be whom he was and not who he was raised to be. Who he was made to be. Born mortal. Died a youth with a broken fail in his blood. Created in steel and electricity. To live as a tool- designed no different than the man who had been born to a blood soaked destiny. A life he had not chosen, yet had been chosen for him. 

Love had looked him in the eyes as it sent an arrow to end his heartbeat. Love had shown him the image of grief and steeled will. Love had ripped his brother from his heart and his life. Love had told him in reflection that what he saw in dark eyes that night as dragons tore into his soul and ripped him apart from the inside was that it had not been rage nor hate that controlled his brother.  
Sorrow. Fear. Love.

Hanzo loved him.

Hanzo had killed him.

Hanzo had endured him.

Hanzo had survived him.

Hanzo had mourned him.

Hanzo would mourn him.

Yet he still existed.  
He was alive, yet he was dead. Here, he was who he had chosen to be. He had chosen to be Genji. To be the man who had died. To be the machine that lived. He was Genji. Two halves that had been broken by two dragons that had torn his heart body apart. Two parts of himself that had nearly ripped his mind from his will to be. To live.

Here, he had found those halves and put them together. He had found the fragments of who he was and who he would be. Putting them together had taken time. It had taken days of looking out to the empty sky and wondering if his body would survive the fall. If he deserved to exist when it caused the ones he loved such pain. To suffer and see his anguish reflected in the faces of those who saw and knew both halves of him. Who mourned for him though he wanted not their sorrow.

It had taken nights of wondering what drove her to seek such desperate actions. To beg him to take her offer of a new life. To live. To drag him back to her world. To deny him from death and to create him anew. To see how far she might go knowing she would regret. Knowing she would cry behind steel hospital doors when she thought him too far to hear. To see red eyelids and know she blamed herself for his agony. He wondered so long as to why.

He knew the answer.

He knew the answer had died the moment he'd woken on that cold table and felt what it was like to be made to feel again. 

She had loved half of him. She had created the other half to serve him, not to become him, yet it was who he was now. It was part of him now. It was a whirl of machines and armor. It was a trio of shrunken that came to his hand at his will. It was a pair of blades that were infused with the same power that gave him mobility. It was a sensor that told him how much damage he endured. How close he came to breaking. To malfunctioning.

It was a heartbeat that echoed in his ears and danced across his vision if he looked through his visor.

Love had cost him a brother who denied his existence.  
Love had cost him someone who might have once saw him as someone more than just a man born to a blood soaked destiny.  
Love had cost him one future and denied him so many others.

Yet as he heard the sound of the omnic monks gathering, he sat and watched the sun rise over the vast mountains of Nepal. Here, he existed. Here, he had chosen to be Genji. Here, he had found who he wanted to be and who he wanted to become.

Genji had once been a man who'd been born to a blood soaked destiny of crime and secrecy that he couldn't keep.  
Genji had once been a hero who wanted to use what he'd been given from a sense that he owed his life to a cause. To undo what he'd done and been party to.  
Genji had once been a man who's life and will had been directed by those who loved him.

The man smiled behind his visor as the morning bells rang out.  
He knew love of others his whole life. Yet it was when he had become alone that he had learned to love himself.

"Genji, will you be joining us for meditation?" The harmonic tone of his master cut the silence of the landscape.  
"In a moment master." He said, pulling off his visor and letting the warmth of the morning sun and chill of the morning air touch his face. Touch his skin.

He would not have them mourn him. He would not have them love that which they could love no longer. He could never expect love. He could not demand it.

He could only forgive their love of him. The visor clicked back into place and without a sound sans the small clicks of the metal to metal his limbs made, he felt into place behind the omnic monk he called his master; the one who'd given him the tools he'd needed to become who he was.

He was Genji Shimada, and he'd exist for no one but himself.


End file.
